Coming Up

The inaugural AMT Festival (art, technology, music) is a pilot initiative of the San Diego Art Institute in collaboration with the Fleet Science Center and Southwestern College to present a national festival of experimental, electronic, and data-driven ideas in a creative laboratory featuring cutting edge performances, music hacking, and demos that connect artists, students, technologists, researchers, thought leaders, and businesses in a vibrant environment.

San Diego Art Institute is pleased to present “CLOTHING STORE”, a solo project by San Diego-based artist Melissa Beck. The opening reception will take place at SDAI Project Space, 141 Horton Plaza on Thursday, December 1 from 6pm-8pm. The exhibition will run until January 1, 2017.

San Diego-based artist Cat Chiu Phillips used a variety of sewing and weaving techniques, including the use of plarn (yarn made from discarded plastic bags) to crochet large, abstract patterns to draw attention to the pollution created by plastic. Join Cat in this series of free, hands-on artmaking workshops, culminating in a community exhibition and installation at Westfield Horton Plaza.

For the past four decades, San Diego Art Institute has been hosting a biennial featuring juried and invitational work by artists living and working between Los Angeles and Tijuana. This international exhibition—juried by Anthony Graham, Assistant Curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego—features work in a range of mediums including photography, installation, painting, video, and sculpture. The night of the opening, five cash prizes will be awarded, including the $1,000 Juror’s Choice award. Additionally, SDAI will award the 7th Annual “Community Impact” award to Anthony LoBue, aka “Tony the Vet”. This award is given to an individual in honor of their generosity of spirit, dedication, and support of the visual arts while in pursuit of their own artistic excellence. Also opening on December 10th is an installation in SDAI’s stairwell, designed by Sosolimited, a San Diego-based art and technology studio that specializes in interactive environments and data-driven design.

The San Diego Art Institute (SDAI) is pleased to invite Al Ridenour, author of The Krampus and the Old, Dark Christmas: Roots and Rebirth of the Folkloric Devil for a lecture and slideshow. The event will take place on Thursday, December 15 from 6pm-8pm at San Diego Art Institute, 1439 El Prado in Balboa Park. The event is $10 or free to SDAI Members.

Open Show San Diego provides a forum for our local community of visual storytellers to share their projects. Several times a year San Diego-based photographers, filmmakers, and multimedia producers gather for an evening of live presentations and lively conversations. Five curated presenters have 10-15 minutes each to introduce one project/body of work. We welcome diverse topics ranging from documentary to fine art. Open Show is designed to be an interactive forum where audience members are encouraged to give feedback and ask questions of the presenters, both formally and in a social setting.

“Consume” provides a playful response to the abundance of discarded materials in our culture of consumption. The work juxtaposes the handmade with the machine-made, transforming junk into an aesthetic entity. The exhibition seeks to initiate a dialogue regarding abundance, post-consumer products, and the frivolity of mass production. Select projects in “Consume” include Plarn House, a large-scale, crocheted structure completely covered in used plastic bags. This piece provides visitors a tactile and immersive experience, reminiscent of makeshift shelters, albeit displaying a resourcefulness and playful ingenuity. Additionally, Charge invites viewers to create their own credit card and collaborate in completing the installation while enabling them to play the role of consumer. In Consumed, visitors will be able to walk through a hanging installation of black, plastic bottles.

Join us for another fun evening of pinning and patching! Got a denim jacket that needs sprucing up? A beanie that could use some extra flair? Looking to add to your collection of artist made zines? BYO projects and enjoy live dj sets and drinks while customizing your gear. Peruse new embellishments being made live on site by local artists, purchase goodies from some of the most popular pin makers from Los Angeles, San Diego, and Tijuana, or make your own patches and pins in one of our workshop areas. Bring your old friends and make some new ones! See you there!

Learn the basics of hand lettering from two extraordinary artists, San Diego Letters founder Roxy Prima and Phoebe Cornog. Guidelines will be set up to assist you in creating your own compositions while designing unique finished pieces to share with friends and family. Walk away with new skills that are sure to add a special touch to cards, chalkboards, and handwritten notes.

Consisting of weekly workshops, where 10 ARTS Empower students and alumni have the opportunity to be individually mentored by professional Art of Élan musicians through unique apprenticeships, the Young Artists in Harmony residency will culminate in two separate performances for the San Diego community. This concert at the San Diego Art Institute will feature world premiere works of originally composed music by all 10 students in an effort to expose new audiences to the transformative power of music written today. San Diego Art Institute will showcase their compositions alongside their concurrent Southern California/Baja Biennial.